Grandfather's Secret
by roisaber
Summary: Nozomi invites Honoka, Kotori, and Umi to her temple for "strength training" before their first concert. But does the spirit-addled girl have some ulterior motive? Nothing can stay hidden forever, especially when ancestors spirits might be watching.


It went without saying that the whole thing had been Nozomi's idea.

"Nam myoho renge kyo! Nam myoho renge kyo! Nam myoho renge kyo!"

"Nam myoho renge kyo! Nam myoho renge kyo! Nam myoho renge kyo!"

They'd been at it for far too long. Honoka broke down into a sputter of coughs, whereupon Kotori thumped her on the back, which only succeeded in making the unfortunate girl cough even harder. Nozomi opened one eye to glare at the two for interrupting her chant.

"Nam myoho renge kyo!" Nozomi continued, perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary.

Umi chanted in harmony with Nozomi's ongoing mantra while Honoka continued to chase after her breath.

"Nam myoho renge kyo!"

It took Kotori's intercession to finally rescue Honoka from drowning in her own saliva.

"Hey, Nozomi, can you give us like, five minutes or something?" she demanded.

Nozomi sighed and stopped chanting. The sonorous tone of the small bell she rang between each repetition of the Lotus Sutra devotion slowly faded into the rich cypress walls of the small temple. With one final, excruciating wheeze, Honoka finally detained her fleeing breath.

Umi's eyes snapped open.

"I thought I told you to take this seriously," she told Honoka sternly.

"It's not my fault!" Honoka retorted. "We've been chanting the same thing for like two hours! I don't think my vocal cords can handle it anymore!"

Umi rolled her eyes. "Yet you have no trouble when it comes to complaining. You don't think giving a concert is going to be _easy,_ I assume?"

"Umi-chan, you're like a slave driver!"

"We promised we'd do our best, right, Honoka-chan?" Kotori cut in. "What I don't understand is why we have to do it here – in Nozomi's temple – at two in the morning."

Umi shifted on her pillow. "Actually, I'm a little unclear on that myself. Nozomi, care to explain yourself?"

Nozomi smiled beatifically, an expression that made the other three girls distinctively nervous.

"Don't you know what day it is?" she asked mysteriously.

Honoka was the first to answer. "Wednesday?"

For a brief, almost imperceptible moment, Nozomi's smile became a smirk. But she quickly comported herself again and pointed to one of the temple's open windows.

"This is the night of the full moon," she explained. "A very auspicious evening – and an exceedingly dangerous one. Everyone knows that the full moon has great powers, but it also comes with many dangers. Any police officer, or paramedic, or state psychiatrist will tell you stories about how the powers of the moon affect people, and make some of them act crazy on the night of the full moon. So, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone. I'd give you a little help with your voice training; meanwhile, you can use Nirichen's chant help me cast a cantrip of protection over the city. Quite clever if I do say so myself."

Honoka made a noise of agreement and then downed half her water bottle in one gulp. Kotori was just grateful for a break. The silver-haired girl laid backwards on her pillow and immediately fell into a half-sleeping daze. Umi just shrugged.

"Tides come from the gravitational pull of the moon against the water in the ocean," she speculated aloud. "Isn't it possible that people behave abnormally due to an unusually strong tug of the water in their bodies due to the moon's increased gravity on the night of the full moon?"

Nozomi stealthily reached across the darkened room and grabbed Umi by the boob. The scandalized young lady let out an undignified squawk, but Nozomi raised her index finger and put it to Umi's lips.

"Umi-chan! Don't you know that the spirits only help those who acknowledge their powers? If you want their help making your first concert a success, you're going to have to stop trying to play 'gotcha!' with them!"

Nozomi gave Umi's left tit an extra squeeze for emphasis, and then let the stricken girl go. Silvery moonlight continued to filter in through the open window, casting stark, dancing shadows against the walls of the inner sanctum.

"Well, now that that's settled, shall we start again?" Nozomi asked cheerfully.

"I've got a question, first…" Honoka slowly interjected.

"Yes?"

"How come you're helping us? Eli doesn't think this is a good idea, and you know it."

Nozomi didn't answer for a minute; instead, she just turned and looked out of the window at the full moon. It hung over the city pregnant with auspices that only she could read. Honoka watched Nozomi while Umi-chan followed her gaze, wondering what the miko saw.

"Let's just say… I have a feeling," Nozomi finally answered.

Umi smirked. "A feeling?"

"A feeling," Nozomi replied with mysterious finality. "Now, let's get back to your vocal training."

Kotori started gently snoring, and it took a sharp kick from Honoka to bring her back into consciousness. The three other girls all set their fingers into the mudra Nozomi had taught them, and Nozomi banged the little silver bell and started the chant again.

"Nam myoho renge kyo! Nam myoho renge kyo! Nam myoho renge kyo!"

Suddenly, there was a loud, unmistakable crack from somewhere above them. It was so loud that the tetrad of ladies stopped their chant immediately. They looked wildly between one another's eyes in the dim lighting, trying to determine what had caused the sudden, unsettling interruption.

"What was that?" Honoka cried out with a squeak. "It sounded like an earthquake!"

"But the ground didn't shake," objected Umi.

Kotori asked, "Could it be something structural? You know, like a beam that broke or something?"

"Let's go investigate the attic," Nozomi concluded with a sidelong glance at the other three.

With some trepidation, Honoka, Kotori, and Umi followed Nozomi down a rice paper hallway until they reached the draw string ladder that led to the attic. Nozomi pulled on the rope and the ladder descended effortlessly, without so much as a sound. Nozomi ascended first, followed shortly by the other three.

"Is there a light in here or something?" asked Honoka, fumbling around for a light switch and coming up empty.

Kotori suggested, "I have a flashlight on my cell phone."

A thin, bright beam erupted from Kotori's cell and pierced the darkness of the attic. Honoka let out a thin shriek and buried her face into Umi's chest. The attic was full of the tricks of the trade, which, in this case, meant terrifying tengu masks; all manner of buddhic and demonic statuettes; rich, violent paintings of the war between devi and asuras; and all manner of strange and sinister relics with an almost supernatural comportment. Nozomi couldn't help but grin. If the power of a religious icon was found in the reaction of those who saw it, then she had a collection of doozies. Nozomi picked up a pair of sandals from one shelf, and showed it to the group.

"These belonged to my grandfather," she explained. "They have a tsukumogami residing in them, that's why they still look so pristine even after a hundred years!"

The girls oohed, and even Umi was impressed in spite of herself. The sandals looked that they might have been woven that afternoon. Umi was skeptical by nature and she had little interest in folklore or spirits. Was it really possible? Nozomi-chan wasn't the kind to lie. Could she have mistaken them for a different pair? But there was simply no way to answer the question beyond the point of doubt, so she joined the other three while they continued to explore the attic.

"Isn't it kind of disrespectful to keep a Buddha like that?" asked Honoka, who was pointing curiously at a statue of Amita that was lying face down on the hardwood floor.

Nozomi just shrugged.

"He's the one that chose to crash out that way," she explained. "I figure – why disturb him? He could use a good nap."

Soon, they came upon the source of the sound. A large wooden chest was sitting on the floor, wide open. A short investigation proved that the lock sealing the chest had rusted through. The sudden release of decades of built-up mechanical energy must have been the source of the crack from earlier.

"Wow, it's my grandfather's chest!" Nozomi exclaimed. "What an propitious omen!"

"What's inside?" Kotori demanded, her curiosity piqued and then some.

"Let's find out!"

The chest was full of personal effects from her late grandfather. There were kimonos, slightly faded and covered in a thin layer of dust that made Honoka start to sneeze uncontrollably. Umi reached in and found a leather-bound diary. She thumbed to a random page and read the first entry she stopped upon out loud.

"September 26, 1962. Still so hot it makes my… uh, nevermind… sweat uncontrollably." Umi blushed so furiously it was visible in the stark moonlight. "I met Akiko-chan at the… er… romance facility, and we tried again at the Ritual of the Pink-!"

Umi slammed the diary shut and handed it to Nozomi without a word. The miko silently scanned an entry picked at random. All three girls watched her face as her eyes widened, and then narrowed again. Nozomi shut the diary and slipped it into her robes.

"It's my grandfather's forbidden spell book. I thought this had been burned! I'll have to take a look at it… uh, later," she murmured.

"That's hardly the sort of behavior one expects from a priest!" Umi hissed.

"Now, now, Umi-chan – Tantra is part of Buddhism, too."

Nozomi wasn't about to admit it, but she'd read the Kama Sutra numerous times – though only for the articles.

"What's Tantra?" Honoka asked innocently.

Kotori bopped her on the head. "I'll tell you when you're older."

The four girls continue to rifle through the chest's contents. There were photo albums filled to bursting with pictures, providing a bottled version of the history of Japan through the 20th century, seen through the lens of the life of one rather hetereodox Shinto priest. There were images of forest shrines and photos of torii and Buddha statues all over Japan. A black-and-white series of proud warships floating in Tokyo's harbor. Then, images of burned, desiccated hulks lying prone before a city left in ruins, and body bags stacked high on the shores of Tokyo Bay. Even Honoka was reverently silent. Then skyscrapers grew out of the ruins like mushrooms after a rainstorm, rising higher and higher until they sliced at the undersides of the clouds themselves with gleaming spires.

"Wow," Kotori whispered.

After a period of quiet reflection, they made it to the bottom of the chest. But something about the way the edges lined up made Umi suspicious. She reached down into the tiny crack along the edges of the chest's interior, and all at once drew the false foundation up out of the bottom of the crate.

"What! A hidden compartment!" Honoka squeaked.

Kotori added, "I wonder what could be inside."

Kotori shined her flashlight directly into the bottom of the chest. The only thing there was a single gramophone record. Nozomi carefully picked it up and held it up to the light. It was covered in so much dust she couldn't even make out the grooves. But one big puff of breath from deep inside her diaphragm, and the record looked as fresh as the day it had been minted.

"What's this?" Nozomi asked curiously. "If only I'd paid more attention in English! H-e-a… this one's an r… and i? Heari?"

"That's a 't'," Umi corrected.

"H-e-a-r-t t-o h-e-a-r-t. Hearuto to hearuto," Nozomi announced proudly.

"That sounds like it would be a great song for the μ's," Honoka enthused.

Umi objected, "How can you say that before you've even heard it?"

"Well, Nozomi's grandfather must have kept this hidden for a reason, right?"

Nozomi smiled mysteriously. "And it can't be a coincidence that my grandfather's chest should open so suddenly, while the three of you were here. This must certainly be the work of the spirits!"

Even Umi found her skepticism shaken.

"Well," Umi announced slowly. "One way or another, we need a way to play this thing. What kind of record is this? Guramafuone?"

"They're even older than record players. I know there's one in the attic somewhere, but it hasn't been used in years. It's probably broken."

The four girls searched until they found the elderly contraption, which was hidden under a table that was itself covered in two sheets and a large bust of some unknown Westerner in the very back of the attic. With some difficulty, Kotori and Umi held up the bust while Honoka and Nozori extracted the heavy machine from inside its erstwhile tomb. It was covered in dust, and Honoka sneezed so hard she almost dropped her end of it.

"Careful!" Nozomi exclaimed, uncharacteristically brusquely.

"Sorry, Nozomi-chan!"

They lugged the gramophone and the record back down to the ground floor. Nozomi and Honoka had to carefully hand it down the ladder to the other two; it was far too heavy to try to climb down with. They finally got it set up in the center of the moonlit temple. Umi started researching the device on her phone, while Nozomi lovingly dusted and oiled the elderly device until it was sparkling.

"So, you have to put the record on the spindle, and then bring down the emplacement with the needle," Umi explained.

Nozomi examined the machine in the moonlight.

"I don't see any needle," she said. "Will it still work?"

"Nope. The needle needs to follow the groove – that's how it makes sound."

"Well, what can we do?" Honoka demanded, frustrated to have come so far only to be stymied by a missing part.

Umi was smug. "I just ordered one from Amazon on my phone."

Then she admitted, "But it's on backorder for two weeks."

"We can't wait that long before we start practicing," Kotori mused. "We're going to need a song before then; we have to start practicing as soon as possible for our first concert!"

"About that – actually, I have an idea…" said Honoka.


End file.
